Fragment, in praise of the book
By: text cyanosphere, Jesseca Ferguson ; poem by Meena Alexander ; box design, Helene Elsborg
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Alexander, Meena, 1951-2018, poet; Elsborg, Helene, designer; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Jesseca Ferguson]
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Boston, Massachusetts]
Language: eng
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Artists' books; Sphere in art; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

Jesseca Ferguson has worked with pinhole photography and hand-applied 19th century photo processes since 1990. Her pinhole photographs and collaged photo objects have been included in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and the UK. Museums holding her work include the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France; The Museum of the History of Photography, Krakow, Poland; Brandts Kladefabrik, Odense, Denmark; Fox Talbot Museum, Laycock Abbey, UK; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, USA and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA. She lives, works, and teaches in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Notes: Printed in an edition of 3, plus one artist's proof, and one poet's proof.

Materials/Medium: Cyanotype on paper, silk, waxed thread, book board, book cloth.

"Fragment, in praise of the book is a sphere of text, printed in deep blue cyanotype on white paper, then backed with transparent black silk. Jesseca Ferguson's 'cyanosphere, ' or three-dimensional cyanotype, transforms Meena Alexander's poem into one linear element, wound into a ball like yarn - to be knitted or woven into an ordered and coherent form. Text comes from textus, derived from texere, to weave. Text is the tissue or fabric of a literary work, woven of words. The original fabric of Meena's text has been rearranged, taken out of sequence, line by line, then re-ordered - to be read in a new sequence as the spherical book is unspooled, delicately, by hand. When a bomb explodes in a bookshop, in a life, in a mind - all is violently disordered, fragmented. The writing of a poem, and the hand-making of a sphere of text - these are our way to re-tell that story, to make a new order from those fragments. The text of Meena's poem glows paper-white, as her words emerge from the darkness of Jesseca's cyanotype, veiled with silk"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.